World Wide Journal of Multidiscip linary Research and Development

WWJMRD2017; 3(10): 167-174

www.wwjmrd.com
International Journal
Peer Reviewed Journal Identification of Shoreline Changes along the Coast of
Refereed Journal
Indexed Journal Vedaranyam using EPR Model
UGC Approved Journal
Impact Factor MJIF: 4.25
e-ISSN: 2454-6615 N. Shenbagaraj, A. Rajeshwari, N.P. Vignesh
N. Shenbagaraj Abstract
Department of Remote Sensing
Shoreline changes are varying from place to place, it also depends on the interruption of human
and GIS, Tamil Nadu
Agricultural University,
activities and sea level rise. It demarcation is a quite difficult process in manual but with the help of
Coimbatore District, Tamil remote sensing and Digital Image processing techniques made to easy. The objectives of the study
Nadu, India are to extract the shorelines by sobel edge detection operator; visual interpretation technique and to
identify the changes using Vector Overlay Technique (VOT) and statistics method from 1978 to 2013
A. Rajeshwari (35 years). In this study, both quantitative (area) and qualitative (rate) shoreline changes are
Department of Rural calculated. In quantitative analysis, 2.41 sq.km of area has affected by transgression and 7.64 sq.km
Development, the Gandigram area has distressed by regression process. The rates of shoreline changes are from 10.72 m
Rural Institute – (DU), (regression) to -7.35 m (transgression), which is used to predict and identify the risk under zones in
Gandhigram, Dindigul that area.
District, Tamil Nadu, India
Keywords: sobel, shoreline change, VOT, Transgression, Regression and DSAS
N.P. Vignesh
3Rural Technology Centre,

The Gandigram Rural Introduction

Institute – (DU), A shore or shoreline is the margin of a land at the edge of the large body of water such as
Gandhigram, Dindigul ocean, sea or lake. It is a dynamic in nature. It is formed by the action of sea waves, which is
District, Tamil Nadu, deposited and eroded the sediments by the geologic process of transgression and regression.
India
Transgression means the sea water moves upwards to the land due to the flood/sea level rise.
Transgression is causes either by the land sinking or the ocean basin water level increased. In
which places the land feature is converted to the sea water is mentioned as transgression.
Regression is the reverse process of transgression. In regression the sea bottom exposes due
to the decrease of sea level. The sea is transformed by the land in which places is called
regression. The shoreline is not a straight line for all places; it has lot of modulations and
undulations because some geomorphic features are easily eroded by the wave energy like as
lime stone. The shoreline changes due to natural and anthropogenic activities both are
interrelated. The global ice sheet shrinking and thermal expansion of sea water both are the
natural process, which is induced by the main reason of human activities. The
industrialization introduced the lot of machine; it has works with the power. In the power
generation times and machine working times it has emits the very dangerous gases like as
carbon monoxide, chlorofluorocarbon and methane etc. These are all gases helps to increases
the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and ozone layer depletion. It facilitates to raises the
temperature in the globe. It has leads to the natural process of shoreline changes. The
changes in coastal zones affect them economically, biologically as well as ecologically [1].
Most of the highly developed cities in the world are lying along the coastal areas. About one
third of the human populations are habituating in and around the coastal areas [2]. Shorelines
are one of the most important features in the earth’s surface. International Geographic Data
Committee (IGDC) is recognized the shoreline as the one of the 27 most important features-
Correspondence:
to be mapped and monitored [3, 4]. The shoreline change studies helps in the different
N. Shenbagaraj
Department of Remote Sensing application fields such as shoreline erosion monitoring, coastal zone management, flood
and GIS, Tamil Nadu prediction, and evaluation of water resources [5]. In that study, the shoreline demarcation is an
Agricultural University, important and difficult task because it is the base for further studies like as shoreline changes,
Coimbatore District, Tamil prediction and finding the vulnerability zones etc. before invention of RS periods the
Nadu, India
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conventional surveys has been used it will takes more times cultivated and dairy also engaged by people. It has been
and huge man power. After invention of RS the shoreline located in the Coramandel coast of Bay of Bengal, which is
demarcation is very easy in the aerial photographs and geographically located in between 10o0’N to 10o50’N and
satellite images. In a person can delineated the shoreline 79o30’E to 80o0’E. The length of the study area is around
with the help of image processing software. The previous 107 km. The Cauvery River drains into the Vedaranyam
researchers, Tasseled Cap Wetness (TCW) and different and, it makes the changes in the nose area swamp. The
Normalized Difference Water Index have been used to most of marshy lands are located parallel to the Palk Strait.
demarcate the shorelines and vector change detection The back water analysis has taken from 1932 to 1992, it
method has been employed to access the changes of five shows considerable enlargement in the region and
East African rift valley lakes by using thematic mapper occurrence of number of sand bodies. Fig. 1 shows the
(TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) sensor study area.
data [5]. In histogram thresholding method, Mid Infrared
(MIR) band has been used to get an image, besides in band
ratio method green and Near Infrared (NIR) bands also
used to get other image, finally the both image are
multiplied, the outcome of that process is used to extract
the shoreline [6]. ISODATA classification technique has
used to assess the shoreline changes of Kolachel to
Kayalpattanam coast [7]. The rate of shoreline changes are
estimated from 2001 to 2008, beach profile data from 1996
to 2006 and coastline and High Water Line (HWL) data
from 1848 to 2005 by “dune toe survey data” [8].
Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) method has
employed to detect the shorelines, and then the threshold
segmentation also applied on the NDWI image to extract
the shorelines. The shoreline changes are measured using
pixel by pixel comparison of the binary image, the changes
are measured in DSAS; EPR and LRR approaches also
adopted [9]. A vector based transect analysis has carried out
to calculate the horizontal displacement of shoreline [10]. In
NDWI image, the sobel operator has been applied to extract
the shoreline of Pearl River estuary [11].
The main objectives of the study are to demarcate the
shorelines of 1978, 1991, 1999, 2006 and 2013 from the
different sensor satellite images, to identify the quantitative
and qualitative shoreline changes for above mentioned
periods and to find the coastal risk zones from the
horizontal displacement of shorelines.
In the present study, the Sobel edge detection operator is
used, which is enhance the boundary of shoreline it helps to
demarcate the shoreline and visual interpretation method is
employed to extract the shorelines. Manually digitizing the
shoreline better because sometimes the images have cloud Fig. 1: Study Area
coverage and sensor problems creates some area missing /
shifting in that times the users have knowledge about that Materials and Methods
area it helps to extract the shoreline in visual interpretation Ortho rectified and geodetic dataset of Landsat Multi
method but image processing is not suitable for that one. Spectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM) and
The quantity of shoreline changes is carried out by VOT Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) data had been
method and quality of changes like as Shoreline Change widely used for coastal research and environmental
Envelope (SCE), Net Shoreline Movement (NSM) and End monitoring studies for many years [4]. In this study,
Point Rate (EPR) are calculated in DSAS tool; it works as different satellites and different sensors data were used to
an extension tool of ArcGIS software. And the horizontal determine shoreline changes along the coast of
shoreline movement based the risk areas are identified. Vedaranyam. Landsat 3 MSS data of 1978, Landsat 7 TM
and ETM+ data of 1991 and 1999 downloaded from the
Study Area Global Land Cover Facility website (GLCF) and the
The study area is located in the eastern part of the Tamil Landsat 8, 2013 data of Operational Land Imager (OLI)
Nadu, India. It is fully covered with the coastal areas of and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) image, downloaded
Nagapattinam and some part of Thiruvarur District. from the USGS Global Visualization Viewer website. The
Nagapattinam is the only discontinuous district in Tamil resolutions of all the above sensor images have 30 m.
Nadu and possible in India. Karaikkal separated in this All data in the world reference system (WGS 84) with
district into two parts. It has been located above the 9 meter GeoTiff format is projected to use the Universal Traverse
elevation from the mean sea level. Thiruvarur district was Mercator (zone UTM 43 N). In the previous study, various
formed on 1st January 1997. In this district, rice, pulses, techniques have been used for identifying the shoreline
sugarcane, groundnut, gingerly and cotton crops are extraction and to detect its changes. In the present study,
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sobel edge detection operator has been used for mapping this study, the shoreline changes are calculated by two
the shoreline. It is one of the non-directional filters in the different methods. The first method is VOT, it is applied to
spatial enhancement. It can be used for enhances the edge detect the quantity of shoreline changes for 1978 – 1991,
contrast of and image in an attempt to improve the 1991 – 1999 and 1999- 2013 periods, the extent of area
boundary of shoreline. Each direction of sobel 3 x 3 mask under erosion and deposition are calculated. The second
is applied in the image, as a result, there are two new method, quality of shoreline changes have been identified
images created. The first image shows that the horizontal by the statistics method. Minimum three different periods
response and the other images show the vertical response. of shoreline and a baseline should be needed to run the
Two images are combined into a single image. The purpose DSAS tool. For this statistics calculation, transects has been
is to determine the shoreline demarcation in the satellite created for 300 m space and 5000 m length. Shoreline
image. Mathematically, the operator uses two 3×3 kernels, Change Envelope (SCE), Net Shoreline Movement (NSM)
which are convolved with the original image to calculate and End Point Rate (EPR) have been calculated in DSAS
approximations of the derivatives for horizontal and tool. The SCE is a distance between the farthest and closest
vertical image. shorelines to the baseline at each transect. This represents
the total changes in shoreline movement for all the
−1 0 +1 −1 −2 −1 positions in the shoreline with irrelevant of their date. The
𝐺𝑥 = [−2 0 +2] * A and 𝐺𝑦 = [ 0 0 0 ]*A NSM is related with the dates of only two shorelines. It is a
−1 0 +1 +1 +2 +1 distance between the oldest and youngest shorelines for
each transect. It represents the total distance between the
Here, oldest and youngest shorelines. The NSM is divided by the
A - The original image number of years elapsed between the two shoreline
𝐺𝑥 - Horizontal derivative image positions, the result is EPR. It has considered as the rate of
𝐺𝑦 - Vertical derivative image shoreline change, which is used to identify the risk areas.
For this study workflow details are clearly shown in fig. 2.
In the outcome of all period edge enhancing images, visual
interpretation technique has used to extract the shoreline. In

MSS TM ETM+ TM OLI / TIRS

MM

Sobel Edge Detection Operation

Visual Interpretation

Shoreline of Shoreline of Shoreline of Shoreline of Shoreline of

1978 1991 1999 2006 2013

Baseline

Change Detection
DSAS Tool

1978 - 91 1991 - 99 1999 - 06 2006 - 13 1978 - 13 Transect Creation

SCE NSM EPR

Identifying the Zone of Transgression
and Regression

Identifying the
Coastal Risk Area

Area Calculation

Fig. 2: Methodology

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Results and Discussion The present study finds the quantitative and qualitative
shoreline changes and the coastal risk areas. Figure 3 – 7
shows the enhanced shoreline boundary of 1978, 1991,
1999, 2006 and 2013. Landsat 5 and 7 satellite MSS sensor
enhanced image band 4, 3 and 2 combination, TM and
ETM+ sensor image images band 5, 4 and 2 combination
and Landsat 8 OLI sensor image band 6, 5 and 1
combination has been applied after that the visual
interpretation method has been used to extract the
shorelines.
Fig. 8 portrays the shoreline changes between 1978 and
1991. In this period, the deposition is 8.4 sq.km, which is
very high while comparing to the extent of area eroded
(0.63 sq.km). The small regions of Prathabaramapuram,
Vettaikkarniruppu and between Kodiakari and
Vedaranyapuram shoreline and Vadakkupoigainallur have
been affected by transgression and the rest of shoreline
altered by regression. Shoreline changes between 1991 and
Fig. 3: Shoreline 1978 Fig. 4: Shoreline 1991
1999 have been clearly shows in fig. 9. For this period 4.28
sq.km of area was changed of which 2.57 sq.km of area
have been altered by transgression and 1.71 sq.km of area
have been modified by regression. In this period of
changes, shoreline of Muthupet R.F to Kodiakarai and
between the shoreline of Velankanni and
Vadakkupoigainallur villages have been modified by
transgression and remaining shoreline of this study area
come under the deposition.
Fig. 10 portrays the shoreline changes between
1999 and 2006. It clearly shows, the entire coastal zone was
altered by either transgression and regression process, of
which the maximum of coastal area (2.19 sq.km) have been
changed by regression and 1.4 sq.km of area have been
modified by transgression. For this period of changes,
transgression and regression comes alternatively in the
entire shoreline of the study area. Fig. 11 describes the
Fig. 5: Shoreline 1999 Fig. 6: Shoreline 2006
shoreline changes between 2006 and 2013. The maximum
of coastal zone (3.01 sq.km) have been changed by the
transgression, which is compared very less area (0.54
sq.km) have been modified by regression. Fig. 12 shows
the entire shoreline changes between 1978 and 2013. It is
greatest evidence for the regression process was dominated
to the transgression in this study area. The regression area
(7.64 sq.km) is almost three times greater than the
transgression (2, 41 sq.km). The adjacent sides of the
vedaranyapuram nose region, Velankanni to Nagapattinam
and small portion of Serattalaikkadu Creek coastal zone
have been changed by transgression, the rest of the study
area varied by regression. Table 1 show the affected area
by transgression and regression for all period of changes in
the entire study area. Fig. 13 portrays the created transect
lines using the shorelines and baseline, which is used as a
base for identifying the shoreline change rates.
Table 1: Shoreline Changes

Fig. 7: Shoreline 2013

Area in sq.km
Classes 1978 - 1991 1991- 1999 1999 - 2006 2006 - 2013 1978 - 2013
Transgression 0.63 2.57 1.4 3.01 2.41
Regression 8.4 1.71 2.19 0.54 7.64
Total 9.03 4.28 3.59 3.55 9.05
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Fig. 8

Fig. 9
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Fig. 10

Fig. 11
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Fig. 12

Fig. 13
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Conclusion
From this study, shoreline changes were identified along
the coast of Vedaranyam from 1978 to 2013. The overall
shoreline changes have considered the erosion was declines
from 1978 to 2013. It is greatest evidence of shoreline
changes of the vedaranyam coast the erosion was higher
than the depositions. The Cauvery River is the main reason
for the deposition occurred on that place because the
flowing Cauvery River deposited the lot of eroded
sediments from the land to the sea. So, the region is
growing day by day. The rate of shoreline change between
-7. 35 and 10. 72 m. The eroded, deposited and stable
coastal changes along the Vedaranyam coast are observed
as 25.51%, 50.43% and 24.06 % respectively. The results
of the study can be used in future to prepare a coastal zone
management plan for Vedaranyam.
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